A modest start to the year: Orangered apricots, Carmine Jewel tart cherris, Spring Satin plumcots. Orangered is not fully ripe yet, but some fruit have been knocked down by wind, they taste good, but not at their best yet. Carmine Jewel could also use some more ripening but it was attacked by earwigs, so I harvested some.
@Stan… so fun to see your beautiful fruit. We’re in western Montana and our Carmine Jewel is just now blooming. We planted our 5th apricot this spring after losing 4 predecessors to winter kill☹️
What do the plumcots taste like?
More like an Asian plum but the texture is firmer.
My Orangered tree had a decent crop for the first time this year. A well ripened Orangered apricot is a real treat!
On the other hand, my Tomcot tree typically oversets, but this year I thinned it absolutely mercilessly. As a result, fruits were much larger and sweeter this time around than in previous years when the tree was all orange from being covered by fruit.
Tomcot apricots:
Tomcot apricots on the left (Brix about 21) and Orangered on the right (Brix about 22, but these couple of fruits were not the best Orangered specimens in terms of ripeness and sweetness):
Orangered and Tomcot are done by now, so my attention switches to other varietiies. Two of the early ripening Anya seedling apricots: E08 and F02. Here’s their comparison side by side, E08 on the left and F02 on the right:
Both are very sweet and flavorful, with Brix above 30 (most samples measure at about 31). Flavor wise I would slightly prefer E08 that is also juicier, but F02 is larger, starts ripening a few days earlier and stays better on the tree when ripe.
Fabulous reports Stan!
I am somewhat envious that you have ripe apricots while mine are pea sized!
I am looking forward to trying some fruit from your Anya seedling scions I grafted last year. I should get a couple this year!
On the other hand, you will be eating apricots later in the summer when all of mine are already done!
Very true!
Flavorella plumcot - very aromatic, juicy, sweet-tart, acidic at the skin and near the stone, flavor closer to a plum than an apricot. It’s first year crop for this tree, so we’ll see how it fares in the future.